Co-edited by Pankaj Ghemawat, a Harvard Business School professor of strategy, this volume grew out of a conference on "Value Creation through International Strategies" held at Barcelona's IESE Business School in 2003. Though all these essays were written by professors and researchers, don't worry: The academic language has been toned down and tightened up for an intended dual readership of both managers and business academics. Translation: It's rigorous yet accessible.
The book focuses on four big questions in international business: What are the sources of value creation in global strategies? How do companies design their international structure? How do companies manage the process of international expansion? How does location specificity matter in this process?
The chapters cover two broad areas—strategy and organizational issues—with the understanding that there is actually a lot of overlap. In chapter three, HBS professor Walter Kuemmerle describes the process of international expansion in knowledge-intensive settings, using data from the electronics and pharmaceuticals industries. Other topics include emerging multinationals from Latin America, decentralization of research and development, globalizing professional services, multinational investment and risk, and many others of interest to both theoreticians and on-the-ground global managers.—Martha Lagace
Table of Contents:
Foreword
- Introduction: International strategy and location specificity
- Introduction to Part I
- The process of international expansion in knowledge-intensive settings: Research questions, theory and summary of findings
- Multilatinas: Emerging multinationals from Latin America
- Corporate governance and globalization: Toward an actor-centered institutional analysis
- Introduction to Part II
- Firm-specific and non-firm-specific sources of advantage in international competition
- Chilean foreign direct investment across Latin America: Alliances and competitive advantage
- International geography and history in host market competitiveness of foreign multinational enterprises: A research agenda
- Introduction to Part III
- Dual paths to multinational subsidiary performance: Networking to learning and autonomy to innovation
- Decentralization of R&D and know-how flows through MNEs: Some stylized facts and insights from theory
- Multinational investment and organizational risk: A real options approach
- Introduction to Part IV
- Globalizing professional services: Are networked organizations an answer?
- The impact of personal and organizational ties on strategic alliance characteristics and performance: A study of alliances in the USA, Israel, and Taiwan
- Introduction to Part V
- The roles of the corporate level in the internationalization process of the firm
- 'Wireless apostles' and 'global emperors': Strategies for domination in a global arena